Over the years there have been MANY conversations/arguments/discussions about the differences between CPA networks and “traditional” affiliate networks. Most of my friends tend to come down on the side of not working with CPA networks. However, I have found that there can be great value in working with CPA networks if you do your homework to find the right ones. I’ve worked with probably 75+ in my 11 years as an affiliate marketer, and here are some of the reasons. (If you are shaking your head at me while you are reading this, at least give my reasons some thought!)

1. Disney Offers

My sites appeal to a lot of Disney fans, but Disney doesn’t run many traditional affiliate offers outside of Disney Shopping. In the past you could find Disney games, Disney Movie Club, and others through the traditional networks. Now everything like that is run through CPA networks. In addition, you can usually find offers for Disney Park information and Disney Cruise Line. My post “Free Build Your Disney Side Stickers” is a great example of a popular post that I often monetize with CPA links.

These are a perfect fit for my audience and tend to convert well. In particular when they run the freebies like the family stickers and the park maps I can offer my readers something I know they will love, and I can make money off of it.

2. Multiple Tracking Methods and Postbacks

One of the biggest complaints in affiliate marketing is not knowing how well transactions are tracking for any particular merchant or network. A number of the CPA networks allow for you to track in multiple ways so that you have more control over the data. For example, you can use the CAKE API to pull reports or you can actually place your own pixel to fire at the end of a transaction and report back directly to you. As a cashback site, I love these options. However, anyone could use them as a method of getting information faster and in various formats. [Read more…]

Last summer I did an Affiliate Summit presentation entitled “20 Questions and Answers from Behind the Scenes.” I keep meaning to include some of that in my blog posts but never got around to it. Today I was talking to Ashleigh about a merchant who offered us an “exclusive coupon” that wasn’t exactly exclusive. It reminded me of this slide that turned out to be a pretty popular one:

Let’s talk about coupon codes in terms of these stair steps and their size.

General Coupon Codes

General coupon codes are the easiest to get and the bottom tier. You might be able to find these on the merchant’s website, their newsletters, and available for all public use. You are not offering your reader any extra value with these codes except maybe just to let them know that the merchant is having a sale if they wouldn’t already be going to the merchant site. Every coupon site will have these, but they are good to include with content so that your readers do not go searching other places for a coupon that might overwrite your cookie.

Affiliate Channel Exclusive Coupon Codes

When a merchant makes a coupon available only to the affiliate channel, you are providing a better deal to your visitor than the customer could get on the merchant site if they went directly. These are great because they give your visitor a reason to keep coming back to your site. When you advertise it as an “exclusive deal,” you are being genuine in that they won’t find the deal if they go directly to the merchant. That said, every other coupon and deal site will likely have these same coupons posted, so they don’t have a lot of unique value for you. Not all merchants will offer affiliate exclusives so be on the look out for them and when they do, take advantage of them.

Vanity Codes

Vanity coupon codes are deals that you can find on other sites (maybe even the merchant’s own site) but with some kind of identifier that the deal is for your readers. Fewer merchants do vanity codes because they have to set them up individually with the merchants. The benefit of a vanity code is that it is clear to your reader that you have a special relationship with the merchant and the deal LOOKS more exclusive than what they could get elsewhere. Just be careful not to heavily promote a vanity code that is a WORSE deal than other deals that the merchant is offering either on their site or through the affiliate channel. Consumers are savvy and you don’t want them to think you are taking advantage of them. Aim for vanity codes that are clearly associated with your site (I try to get either SUNNY or SREWARDS or SR10OFF or something like that for Sunshine Rewards).

Exclusive Coupon Codes

Coupon codes exclusive to your site are the goldmine of all coupon codes you can get from a merchant. This is a deal (usually for a limited time) that a customer cannot get anywhere else besides your site. It may or may not be a vanity code. That matters less than the actual deal itself. Usually you either have to be doing a lot of volume with a merchant or be a perfect niche site fit for them to get a true exclusive coupon code. Even better, some merchants will tie the commissions to the coupon code so that if another site scrapes the code and uses it, you still get the commission. Alternately, they may require that a certain link be used for the consumer to get the deal so people have to visit your site to be able to use the code. This is rarest of the coupon codes and worth the most to you.

Whether you are an affiliate looking for coupon codes for your site or a merchant trying to negotiate with affiliates, understanding the different types of coupon codes and their true value is extremely important!

Are there other types of coupon codes that you use in affiliate marketing? Anything that I missed?

I use the coupon feeds from the networks to populate my site, Sunshine Rewards. I import them into my admin panel and then someone on my staff runs a quick check on them for duplicates and blatant errors. We run that check as a courtesy to our members so that we aren’t publishing deals that are bad or do not exist. It’s time intensive, but we have a pretty good process. However, if a coupon that comes through a data feed is not accurate, who is responsible for fixing it, the merchant or the affiliate?

An Angry Merchant

On January 26, I received an email at 8pm on a Saturday night from an angry merchant. The email clearly went to their entire affiliate base (at 8pm on a Saturday night) and stated:

“Good Evening, The Affiliate Exclusive X offer has been cancelled. Unfortunately there are many publishers that posted the offer early and the photo team has decided to pull the plug on the offer. We apologize for any inconvenience. X Affiliate Team.” (emphasis added)

This was the second time I had received such an email from this particular merchant. Although I wasn’t working (did I mention it was a Saturday night??), I immediately went to our page to see if we were one of the publishers at fault. Sure enough, the deal was listed on our page. I immediately removed it.

However, as I went in to remove it, I noticed that although the text of the deal said that it started on January 27, the database field for start date was January 26. I checked all of the other coupons that we had for that merchant, and they were the exact same. The start dates the merchant entered into the “start date” field were all one day earlier than the text.

Who Should Scrub the Coupons?

I emailed the merchant back explaining the situation and said that I did not believe that any of the affiliates posted the deal early intentionally or to get a jump. Rather, most of us use the coupon feeds and do not have the time to manually change every start date when the text and the fields differ. I never received a response.

I try to be pretty balanced when it comes to merchant and affiliate responsibilities, but in this case I think that the affiliates have every right to post the deals as they are sent to us. Yes, we can scrub all of that data and change the dates. But consider:

Most merchants are doing it right. Why should we have to spend all of that extra time on merchants who just don’t use the system right?

We don’t have time to manually add every coupon. That’s why we use the coupon feeds to begin with.

There isn’t an ROI for most of us to pay for a coupon service or an employee just to scrub the coupons that the merchants are adding incorrectly.

With thousands of coupons coming in every day, we are not always going to catch merchant errors even when we do manually look through the coupons.

I’m curious as to what other affiliates think about this and, even more, what merchants think about it. Do other affiliates manually check and change every coupon? Do merchants/affiliate managers/OPMs know how to use the system properly? If not, would they hold affiliates responsible for posting the incorrectly coded coupons a day early?

(I intentionally withheld the name of the merchant here because I don’t think they are doing a bad job with the program overall. I just think they are missing the boat on this one issue. However, I see many other merchants who consistently enter the wrong dates into the feed as well.)

I’ve been hearing a lot of talk amongst my friends about the alleged “Free Shipping Day” coming up in December. As someone who has worked in online shopping for years, I am here to tell you that you are asking for trouble if you wait for “Free Shipping Day” to do your online holiday shopping.

First of all, many merchants do free shipping year round. Even more merchants will be running free shipping as their holiday promotions starting on Black Friday. At Sunshine Rewards alone we have hundreds of free shipping deals. And we only have about 700 merchants total that we work with. Take a look at the companies that are already offering free shipping of some kind. Which other ones could you be waiting for?

Second, check out the shipping schedules for most merchants. Free Shipping Day is supposed to be December 17. That’s just 8 days before Christmas, including a weekend. Most merchants will tell you that if you want to use standard shipping, you need to place your order before December 17 (especially if the order is personalized in any way).

Third, even assuming that the store you are wanting to order from will still be shipping Christmas gifts by the 17th, do you want to a) take the chance that the items you want will be sold out, or b) take the chance that UPS or Fed Ex will be even a day late in getting them to you and your gifts will not arrive by Christmas? Been there, done that. I’ve even done the “guaranteed to be delivered by Christmas” thing and ended up getting the gifts a day or two later. It just isn’t worth the risk.

Lastly, free shipping often comes with strings. A free shipping coupon won’t do you any good if it only applies to a minimum order and you won’t be placing that minimum order. You would have been better off with a percent or dollar off coupon that applied to your minimum purchase.

There’s a lot of hype surrounding holiday shopping and every year there’s something new added to it– Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Green Monday, now Free Shipping Day. The bottom line is that there will be good deals from Thanksgiving through the end of the year and some deals that will be extra good because they are loss leaders or in limited supply. Do your homework and scope out coupon sites, cash back shopping sites, etc. rather than getting caught up in when everyone says you should be shopping. And don’t wait until the last minute unless you like taking risks with your gifts.